Flashback. Beginning June 16 last year, more than 130 treasures from the tomb of the famous boy King Tut and other Valley of the Kings tombs and additional ancient sites [were] on display at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for five months. According to The Art Newspaper, by early September, 600,000 tickets had sold, and total attendance was projected to approach one million, placing the exhibition second in overall attendance only to the 1.2 million attracted by the 1979 show.
LACMA did an excellent job of addressing all five of the strategies above by managing reservations and crowds through the support of its partners: AEG finances the show, AEI manages production and some of the logistics of the tour, and National Geographic produces related books and films. LACMA members were able to be first in the queue to choose not only the date they would like to attend, but also the time. The latter is not typically an option and, in fact, it was a stringent requirement to address number 3 above. The museum took reservations several weeks in advance to fill the calendar dates as well as time slots each day. This way they were able to manage the demand by spreading out the attendance more evenly over the course of a day.
To further optimize queuing beyond the initial entry point, they disallowed back tracking within the venue and metered out optimally sized groups that could spend only a certain amount of time (e.g., 20 minutes) in each exhibit room. Most people I spoke with agreed that it helped enhance their experience as it regulated the number of people crowding each artifact. Which is important to note with respect to the museum staff given last week’s labor strike at the Louvre, where, as described by Digital Journal, “There can sometimes be 65,000 visitors on one day. No wonder they are stressed … they are constantly telling people, no flash photography, who don’t listen. The crowds get larger, but the staff does not.”
Posted by: Colin Mangham